In the tough economic climate of 2013, it was a ‘dog-eat-dog’ world with savage competition and customers being bribed with up to a $300 credit to switch electricity suppliers. Genesis Energy was also coming up for sale in March 2014 and needed to be in the best position possible in order to attract shareholders. These factors put immense pressure on both internal and external stakeholders.

Contracting was known to be the key to keeping customers sticky and with less than four months until the sale of the business, the challenge of rolling out contracting to the entire base was taken on. While wrangling ancient processes and aligning key stakeholders within the business, thousands of customers were seamlessly contracted. This was no mean feat considering the timings: launching a ‘premium’ contracting product during the height of summer – typically when there is zero interest and most people would be away on holiday.

Despite it all, the dual challenge was successfully met: reduce churn while remaining profitable. The benefits of contracting our customers continues to be seen as monthly churn results (lead indicator for annual churn) have outperformed the industry average for both August and September 2014 - the first time Genesis Energy has achieved this in over 12 months.